Casino tycoon blows £25m on works of art

A Las Vegas gaming billionaire has spent more than £25 million in 24 hours on two paintings which will go on public display at a casino he is building in America's gambling capital.

Steve Wynn, who is also one of the biggest private art collectors in the United States, paid almost £10.8 million for a self-portrait by the French painter Paul Cézanne at Christie's in New York on Wednesday. The previous night, he spent more than £14.6 million on In the Roses (Portrait of Madame Leon Clapisson) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir at the rival auction house Sotheby's.

In one of the art market's most extraordinary recent shopping expeditions, Mr Wynn not only bought the two most expensive paintings sold at this week's major New York sales but also single-handedly accounted for almost a third of all the money spent.

Mr Wynn, 60, is a hard-headed businessman who has been credited with turning Las Vegas from a gambling den into a more family-oriented holiday resort, with other attractions.

Although gaming remained his core business, he opened a five-star French restaurant and an art gallery at his Bellagio resort in Las Vegas during the late 1990s.

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He decorated the Picasso restaurant with 13 original paintings by the Spanish artist, while another 25 Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works by painters such as Van Gogh, Matisse, Renoir and Cézanne, went on show in the gallery.

While Mr Wynn's passion for art is undeniable, he also has a good nose for a deal; he charged the public to visit the museum as well as billing his own company for displaying pictures from his personal collection.

Almost three years ago he sold Bellagio to the gaming company MGM Grand for £5 billion when it was revealed that about half the art collection belonged to him and the rest to his company. MGM subsequently sold 11 of the paintings for almost £100 million and it is believed that at least three of these were bought back by Mr Wynn.

Still flush with money from the Bellagio sale, Mr Wynn and his wife, Elaine, bought the Desert Inn, one of Las Vegas's most historic casinos, which was once the home of the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. Mr Wynn said he planned to demolish the Desert Inn and build a 59-storey hotel and casino which is to be called Le Reve, which means The Dream.

The name is no accident. One of Mr Wynn's biggest recent art purchases has been Picasso's Le Reve for which he is believed to have paid the German financier and art collector Wolfgang Flottl about £40 million.

This portrait of Picasso's mistress Dora Maar was one of the star lots when Christie's sold paintings belonging to the New York collectors Victor and Sally Ganz in 1997 and it will become a big attraction at the new casino.

There it will be joined by the two paintings which Mr Wynn bought this week. Although Cézanne painted 26 self-portraits, the one Mr Wynn acquired at Christie's on Wednesday is one of only four produced in later life and is the only one still in private hands.

During the auction, Mr Wynn sat in one of the "sky boxes" which both major auction houses have built above their New York salerooms to enable important clients to get a good view without being seen. Bidding by telephone through Guy Bennett, a Christie's expert just a short distance below him, Mr Wynn was initially only identified by his paddle number, 1702.

But the tycoon knows the value of publicity and, unlike most big art buyers, agreed that Christie's should reveal his name.

The Cézanne and the Renoir bought this week will hang in a temporary gallery until Le Reve opens in 2005.

Yet there is a tragic irony about Mr Wynn's art collecting. His eyesight is failing and he finds it increasingly difficult to see the masterpieces on which he spends such huge sums of money.